Re: PHP and SQL web developer re-creates all business logic found in RPG programs

Scott,

I wasn't familiar with the UDTF acronym, so I did a google search which produced a link to an article you wrote for System i Network about using a UDTF to query the IFS from an SQL Select statement; very cool.

This thread is interesting because there are so many options for using RPG business logic in Web applications.

If the maintainers of an RPG CRM package were skilled in HTML then I'd suggest using Icebreak or CGIDEV2 or something along those lines. But in this case is sounds like the HTML skills reside with a PHP developer. And there is some question about whether to migrate the code off IBM i, entirely. Or use an interface that connects PHP and RPG.

For the sake of discussion, let's say the CRM package is fairly robust. Perhaps not as robust as Sugar CRM or Salesforce, but something that the company has used for many years, and has a lot of features, and would like to keep, rather than migrate to a commercial solution. Say there are many screens and many business procedures.

Let's also say that the company is inclined to retain most of the business logic in RPG, but provide a thin UI wrapper, using PHP. Out of the interface options (Web Services, Stored Procedures, User Defined Table Functions, or the i5 PHP Toolkit functions), is there one that you'd recommend in the context that I've outlined?

Thanks,

Nathan.




----- Original Message ----
From: Scott Klement <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 9:18:03 AM
Subject: Re: [WEB400] PHP and SQL web developer re-creates all business logic found in RPG programs

No, I normally write my business logic as a service program designed to
be easy to call directly from ILE RPG. Then I add simple wrapper
routines to make it compatible with either stored procedure logic or
UDTF logic.

That way, ILE programs can call the ILE interfaces, and non-ILE programs
can use the stored procedures.

However, I *have* used stored procedures from ILE RPG in the past, and
have published examples in the past. It's just not my normal way of
doing things...

Finally, if it's important that your routines work both from embedded
SQL languages, and from languages that use the CLI (ODBC, JDBC and PHP
use the CLI engine under the covers) then you might consider using UDTFs
instead of stored procedures, since they work from both environments.